Joan Rivers’ Versailles-style penthouse gets a $3.5 million markdown
Can we talk?
The late great comedian Joan Rivers’ Versailles-style penthouse triplex has just received a spooky price cut — from $3.5 million.
However, you still need to pay a hefty sum to buy the chic pad. It’s now on the market for $34.5 million, down from the original asking price of $38 million.
The seller, we learn, is a member of the Saudi royal family — reportedly Prince Muhammad bin Fahd, son of the late King Fahd and former governor of Saudi Arabia’s Eastern Province, who paid $28 million for the palatial penthouse in 2015 .
Located at 1 E. 62nd St., off Fifth Avenue, the lavishly decorated home occupies a huge, 42-foot-wide limestone house built in 1903. designed by architect Horace Trumbauer in neo-French classic style.
Rivers once described their interior design as “Louis XIV meets Fred and Ginger,” noted Page Six.
The queen of comedy lovingly decorated the 5,200-square-foot triplex from the ground up, making it fit for a princess — including those she hosts at home, like Princess Diana. Rivers bought it in 1988, a year after her husband Edgar Rosenberg died.
She lived there for 28 years and even served as the condominium’s executive director before she died in 2014 at the age of 81.
Rivers said her home was haunted for many years by the ghost of Mrs. Spencer, JP Morgan’s niece and the first occupant of John R. Drexel’s 42-foot-wide mansion.
Gimme once walked through the palatial dig sites and saw where Rivers kept many of her jokes on index cards. But no sign of Mrs. Spencer.
Before Rivers stopped by, she told realtor Dolly Lenz about the ghost “hanging around her bedroom.” She sat next to Joan and watched her do her makeup. It was a very long process,” Lenz told Gimme.
The four bedroom, five bath penthouse features five fireplaces. A private elevator leads to an entrance hall that leads to a two-story gallery adjacent to a ballroom. Both rooms feature 23-foot ceilings, wood-burning fireplaces, and Versailles hardwood floors. Rivers received many celebrities from her royal home.
There is also a paneled corner library and a formal dining room with 18th century French paneling and additional wood burning fireplaces and a patio. Upstairs, a master bedroom suite overlooks a landscaped patio overlooking Central Park and the city skyline.
The penthouse also features a corner office and living room with a wood-burning fireplace.
The listing brokers are the namesake of Dolly Lenz Real Estate and her daughter Jenny.
